


Take Wing with a Prayer and a Song

by TrekInTandem



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Related, Character Study, Darillium, During Canon, Episode: 2013 Xmas The Time of the Doctor, Episode: 2017 Xmas Twice Upon a Time, Episode: s06e08 Let's Kill Hitler, Episode: s06e13 The Wedding of River Song, Episode: s10e06 Extremis, Episode: s10e12 The Doctor Falls, F/F, F/M, Fills in the blanks, Final Battle, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Hallucination? You decide, Haunting? You decide, Heroic Rescue, Humor, Idiots in Love, Last Stand, Light Dead Wife Angst with Happy Ending, Love never dies, Oh also..., One Shot, POV Third Person, POV Third Person Omniscient, Post Regeneration, Post-Episode: 2015 Xmas The Husbands of River Song, Post-Episode: 2017 Xmas Twice Upon A Time, Pre-Episode: s11e01 The Woman Who Fell to Earth, Pre-Regeneration, Regeneration, Regeneration Angst (Doctor Who), River Song is always there to him, Space Wives, Tags Are Cool!, The Doctor's thoughts during "The Doctor Falls" and "Twice Upon a Time", True Love, internal POV, only a bit though, recollections, related to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 23:48:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16775371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrekInTandem/pseuds/TrekInTandem
Summary: In which the Twelfth Doctor’s refusal to regenerate is all about River Song and so is his change of heart. In which River is with him (and/or his thoughts are with River) during his final battle. In which choosing to regenerate after all is, to quote Madonna, “just like a prayer.” In which River is always there to him and he always listens. In which this doesn’t change with the face. In which Twelve regenerates into Thirteen and there is ALWAYS a Song.Written in the last week of 2017 when I was thinking about the most wonderful ways the Thirteenth Doctor’s fall at the end of "Twice Upon a Time" could go—all of which included River Song. So—ALSO in which you get two alternate what-happened-next imaginings of the Doctor’s fall. Now with added River!





	Take Wing with a Prayer and a Song

**Author's Note:**

> The headings in this fic are lyrics from the song “Comin’ in on a Wing and a Prayer” (which was inspired by tales of World War II bomber crews returning home from bombing runs in damaged planes and which in turn partially inspired the title of this fic) and, in one case, from Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” although neither song in any way inspired the story. After the fact, they just . . . weirdly . . . fit.

**(One motor gone)**

He’s been dreading this, the moment when Nardole figures out the rest of the plan and confronts him about it.

All this time and Nardole has not in the least relaxed his original obstinate adherence to the dictates of River Song as absolute, inviolate and ironclad.

He is not allowed to be alone—because he mustn’t forget to be the Doctor, which he sometimes does if he’s alone with himself for too long.

And he is not allowed to get himself killed.

Those are River’s rules, always were, and those are Nardole’s instructions. _Never mind_ if being the Doctor and not getting himself killed sometimes conflict.

River herself had walked a fine line in balancing those priorities at times. She’d understood he felt his friends’ safety trumped his own and had honored his wishes in that regard, even those times when keeping his friends safe had meant leaving him in jeopardy and he could see it wrecking her to do it. Otherwise, when the dissonance between the two was so extreme that being the Doctor and surviving were mutually exclusive alternatives, River had resolved it not by forfeiting one priority in favor of the other but by her willingness to make of herself a last recourse. River Song—the third option. His way out. Any time being the Doctor had taken him to a moment when it seemed he couldn’t _not_ get killed, she’d been all too ready to throw herself between him and whatever death was coming for him. She’d sacrificed a great deal to keep him alive over the years—all the rest of her faces, her freedom—even her own life in the end.

He’s tried to honor that since she left. He’s tried to stay alive for River, to always curb his recklessness just enough to survive.

She obviously knew he couldn’t be trusted with it on his own without her, so there’s been Nardole, scolding and nagging at every turn, because while River had imbued Nardole with her determination when she set him his task, he’s never had her instincts or judgment, her ability to read a deadly situation and assess how likely it actually is to kill the Doctor.

So he’s often been overprotective when it wasn’t necessary, chastising the Doctor for going too close to dangers that River would have taken one look at (given him that sparkly-eyed smile with the springy eyebrows) and happily run straight toward with his hand in hers.

But Nardole’s not wrong this time. What he means to do will get him killed.

Or it would, if he weren’t already dead.

Maybe that—the fact he’s already dying, killed on the roof of that hospital-turned-slaughterhouse—is why the argument, now it’s happening, turns out to be less heated and shorter than he expected.

Nardole sees sense in surprisingly little time, but when he gives in, the Doctor realizes that it’s only happened because he has given away far more of his intentions than he’d ever expected Nardole to guess at on his own.

_One of us has to stay down here and blow up a lot of silly tin men, and one of has to go up there and look after a lot of very scared people, day after day for the rest of their lives, and keep them safe. Now the question is this, Nardole. Which one of us is stronger?_

He shouldn’t have put it like that. With the _stronger_ thing. He’s been entirely too clever—leaping on this flattering tactic as soon as he thought of it because he knew it would work, not considering what else he’d be telling Nardole with that question.

When Nardole turns around, the Doctor sees that he knows he hasn’t just been putting off regeneration until after the immediate crisis has passed. Telling Nardole it was too risky right now to cloud his mind by stuffing it into a whole new head or possibly to entirely incapacitate himself for hours or even days—that had worked the first time he rejected the regeneration shortly after they got here, and he’s carried off the lie for two whole weeks, but now he’s given the game away with one careless word. 

He can’t take care of these people for years because he’s not going to be around that long, and now Nardole knows it.

It’s not the physical strength he’s lacking, though right now he’s hardly at his best. It’s the other kind. The kind you need to keep on being someone different over and over again, to keep on going after everyone else is gone, to lose everyone you love and still become someone new without them there waiting to take your brand new hands in theirs.

He doesn’t have the strength for _that_. Not anymore. Not this time.

He can’t just change and go on with a new face when Bill is a cyberman and Amelia Pond was stuck living out her life eighty years too early, died before she was born, and he can’t ever see her again. When River is all out of faces because she gave them all to him to make up for a thing she couldn’t help (and had only ever done because of what _he_ ’d let be done to her). River all out of faces far too soon, having had far too few and those in far too short a time—that too, his fault. And now River dead in the Library, her last face, too, sacrificed for him.

And he hadn’t even known when he’d watched her do it. Oh, he’d known, as she prepared to sacrifice herself and he could do nothing to stop her, what she must be to him in the future (she knew his _name_ ), but even so, he’d had _no idea_ what he was losing.

He knows now, and he can’t bear it for twelve more lifetimes, not for even a single lifetime more.

It’s not a decision he’s made. It’s just a truth he’s known for a long time, since Darillium.

He’s managed to go on after River left, to keep being the Doctor, to avoid getting killed as best he could because it’s what she would have wanted. But he’s known all along that when he inevitably couldn’t avoid it any more, another face would be—ha—more than he could face.

Nardole has seen that now, but the Doctor, his tongue already flying away with some nonsense to keep Nardole from commenting just a bit longer, realizes that Nardole isn’t actually surprised.

Well, they’ve known each other a long time, after all. More to the point, Nardole knew River. If anyone left alive could even begin to understand, then, what he’s lost and why he just can’t, Nardole’s the most likely bet.

“I’m going to name a town after you,” Nardole says, giving in. “A really rubbish one.”

Not trying to talk him into regenerating, not speaking of that at all—it’s a kindness.

Relieved and grateful, the Doctor grabs at it. “Oh, I’m counting on it.”

“And probably a pig.”

Ignoring the not regenerating thing might have been a kindness to him, but the Doctor knows that giving in on the human-farming thing is not for his sake. No, Nardole is conceding to undertake that for _River_ , because if _she_ were here with him and he couldn’t take care of these people, she’d do it for him. Oh, yes, that was River all over. Always there when he needs her. Always prepared to do what he can’t. And she’s left him Nardole to look after him, to do what she would do, at least as much as is possible. He tries, does Nardole. _Really_ tries, because River asked it. So, as she _isn’t_ here to do what he can’t, Nardole will do it in her stead.

They’ll probably never know it, but whatever time and peace these people have after today, they’ll owe it to Professor River Song. And it’s all right if they don’t know. River never liked it when strangers noticed she was kind; she much preferred they remember how dangerous and scary she was. That at least, she thought, could be _useful_.

Nardole has turned his attention to Bill. There is just one more matter for here and now, and this one absolutely _will_ require words, but not his. This is Bill’s.

“Young lady, you're coming with me. No arguments,” Nardole is telling Bill. “May I remind you I'm still empowered to kick your arse.”

Eh? Okay, fair enough.

Once River Song has given you leave to kick the arse of the Doctor, you can pretty much assume you’re free to kick any arse you like.

“You'd have to go back down there to that hospital and find it then,” Bill cracks.

Indomitable Bill. Nothing and no one in the universe can break that spirit.

Was he ever that resilient? Of course, Bill has lost herself only once, not twelve times—she hasn’t even let that one time _take_ —and she hasn’t lost any of the people he’s lost.

“Look, Bill—”

“My arse got kicked a long time ago, and there's no going back.” She crosses to the Doctor’s side, a physical enactment of her words, of the stand she’s resolved to make. “All I've got left is returning the favor.”

“Oh, great,” Nardole kvetches. “So _she's_ allowed to explode.”

Ignoring this as the undirected condemnation of an unfair world that it is, the Doctor turns to Bill, “Are you sure?”

“You know I am.”

Bill’s words a performative utterance that change the nature of reality, making real and present the choice the Doctor knew she would make and sealing her fate, there is nothing worth saying to be said in the wake of them.

Even Nardole knows it; he leaves to start the evacuation with an acknowledgement that there will never be the right words. Not to properly honor Bill’s choice or her spirit or her resolve. Certainly not to say goodbye. There’s never words enough for that. Not when it’s for real, forever. Words are too cheaply spent and too easily made to lie to be of much use for the biggest, most important things.

River had understood that.

She had married him without any words, as he had her. He’d needed her to _know_ , from as close to her beginning as possible, because he’d spent too long trying not to let on when she was older, but performative vows of the traditional sort, meant to change their condition by binding them together with the act of speaking, would have been redundant. So, what they considered their wedding ceremony had only formalized in each of their minds what was already more real than any words could make it.

There’s no point in promising what simply _is_ , not when it’s absolute and immutable.

The only promises between them had been hers in Berlin when she had chosen a new name and his not to be alone at the end of their long, long night on Darillium. She was too wise, too kind to ask him to promise more, to ask as much of him as she had of Nardole on his behalf. At the end, as ever, she had asked only for what he could give.

His promise _had_ required words, the sort that shaped reality, unlike hers to him, when she’d said no more (no less either) than _Hello, sweetie_ and he’d understood she had chosen to be River Song, _his_ River, whom she had seen he loved from only the way he spoke the name, chosen to be the woman who had engendered that love _and_ to love him back.

His promise had needed voicing to be made real, to bind him to it; hers, already fact, had needed only to be conveyed, and that hadn’t really required any words at all, not with her hands on his face, skin against skin and mind against mind, with her lives pouring into him, new breath in empty lungs because of her, his hearts thumping again and now to the rhythm of hers, the beat of them compelled by the beat of hers.

She hadn’t needed words, no, but he was grateful she’d spoken nonetheless. He wouldn’t have thought he could cherish her _Hello, sweetie_ more than he already did, but after Berlin, he had.

Words could _matter_. But too often there were truths that were too big for them.

So they had declared themselves husband and wife, acknowledging a fervent, futile desire to be inseparable, without words, and they had, upon each reaching the inevitable moment of separation anyway, chosen not to voice any words at all that would pretend to be enough for a final goodbye.

In fact, River’s very last word to him had been _Spoilers_ , full of the promise of a future with her better than anything he could then imagine. ( _It's okay. It's okay. It's not over for you. You'll see me again. You've got all of that to come. You and me. Time and space. You watch us run._ ) It’d been the first word he said to her last face when it was brand new, too.

When the final moment came, she hadn’t said goodbye at all. She’d comforted him amid her own tears and given him hope instead.

The same thing she’d wanted to leave him with on Trenzalore. _Say it like you’re going to come back . . . Till the next time, Doctor. . . . Oh, there’s one more thing . . ._

He’d tried to do the same for her on Darillium.

_Now, while I’m away, don’t be alone. Promise me, Doctor._

_I promise._ _Right, then. See you, Professor Song. And forget those stupid_ stories _. This isn’t the last time you see me._

Of course he’d known she wouldn’t miss the subtext—the spoiler—that _he_ wouldn’t see _her_ again, not River, but it was the best he could do without lying and that had been one thing about which he would not lie, not to her.

And she _hadn’t_ missed it, he’d seen, but she’d smiled at him anyway. He had never fooled himself that she hadn’t figured out the broad shape of it immediately the one and only time she’d mentioned Darillium as their last night, that very first time they’d stood on their balcony overlooking the towers, but after centuries of living with it since, she’d had far too much practice to let it keep her from smiling as she’d said, _Till the next time, then, Doctor. It’s been a brilliant night. And the towers! They were worth the wait._

_Oh, yes. I thought so too. Brilliant. The_ happiest _of nights, wife._

_Yes, the happiest. But, husband, they_ all _have been, you know. Every night we share is the happiest night for me._

He had appreciated the continuous present tense, the game of pretend they were playing for each other. The need to maintain it was the only thing keeping him together.

_For me too. Always will be._

_Of course_ always _. Like us, Doctor. Always and_ completely _._

She’d said it emphatically, as if she wanted to sear the words into his mind, and then she’d kissed him, love too big for words flooding between them through the mental link that hadn’t needed contact to open for a long, long time. When the kiss had ended, she had stepped back and smiled flirtatiously as she tapped at her vortex manipulator. _The moment something interesting comes along, I’ll call you first thing._ Had turned earnest as she added, _Just like always._

_It’s a date. Just like always. And like always, I’ll be there when you do._

_Don’t be late_ , she’d teased.

_For you? Never._ A beat. _You might be falling out of a spaceship. The TARDIS would never let me risk it._

_Ah, I knew there was a reason._ A smile too soft and sad for the teasing exchange. _Take care, Doctor._

The tip of her finger had been brushing the activation key on her manipulator but he spoke just quickly enough to make it pause. _Hey, I’m_ your _Doctor_. _I_ always _am, River. Never forget it or doubt it._

There might have been a sheen of tears in her eyes in the last moment before she’d vanished, but he had been too busy not choking on the sob threatening in his throat to be sure.

The warmth in her voice, though, when she’d replied, he was sure of that.

My _Doctor. Always._

Then she had been gone.

And she _had_ called. Only it had gone wrong, the message diverted to the wrong face. Except it wasn’t the wrong face at all, but exactly the one who needed it, who needed to meet her for the first time so everything else would happen as he’d lived it since.

Because River had been right that day—those times were worth dying to preserve. He’d only wished it didn’t have to be _her_ doing the dying.

But now it’s his turn.

River died so they could have their time and so Donna and the lost patrons of the Library could still live out the rest of their lives. Now he’ll use what time he has left to make sure the people here get that same chance.

No, he’d never want to die of anything else.

-x-

He and Bill go outside to await the new attack, but soon enough Bill too has gone to get on with her part in things, and it’s just him, alone on what will soon be a battlefield.

It’s not Trenzalore, he’ll give it that. Not the blood-soaked fields of Trenzalore where he’d slaughtered his old enemies in droves and watched generations of new friends fight and die, day after day, for 600 long years after the siege was broken.

He’d wanted a new destination, and he’s gotten it.

At least this time he isn’t the cause of this war, and while it will continue without him in a few years when the cybermen have had time to rebuild, for him, this war won’t last long at all.

He just has to buy enough time to make sure Nardole has gotten the others out. And then . . . then . . .

He’s dying already, he reminds himself. So there’s really nothing to be afraid of that hasn’t happened already.

Nothing that happens in the next little while can _really do_ anything to him at all. Of course, that doesn’t mean it isn’t going to hurt. That doesn’t mean it isn’t hard to wait for it, and the end that’s coming, all alone.

He focuses on the weight of River’s diary in his inside pocket. He doesn’t go around feeling the weight of every damn thing in his pockets all the time—with all the stuff he pockets on the regular, that would get wearisome fast—but this weight, it’s there when he wants it to be. When he needs to feel it.

The weight of all their days, reduced to words, and those just scrawls of ink on paper. But they’re River’s words.

River’s truth.

Some of them come back to him now, the same ones he’s often clung to since Nardole turned up with her diary shortly after she’d gone to the Library. (That was River—prepared for every eventuality and knowing better than to leave it up to him just then to keep the diary safe.)

_Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit, without hope, without witness, without reward. Virtue is only virtue in extremis. This is what he believes, and this is the reason, above all, I love him. My husband. My madman in a box. My Doctor._

He hadn’t needed Nardole to tell him (though he had) that River had marked this page of her diary and told Nardole to show it to him if ever he seemed on the verge of acting in a way that contradicted it. He’d understood _that_ from the moment he’d realized where the words he was hearing had come from. Of _course_ River had not left him after what she knew, whatever he said (or clumsily avoided saying), would be the last time he saw her without arranging for someone to look after him and, as much as was possible, do all the things she would if she could have.

Nardole has not had to remind him of the passage since (and he’d jumped the gun that first time but you couldn’t expect him to know like River would have known that he’d never execute Missy no matter the depth of her betrayal)—River’s words and who she believed he is are always with him, ensuring that he never comes near the brink. That he never fails to be less than the man she loved.

 _He_ would have said he didn’t believe in anything, not in the sense of being certain of the rightness of any sort of philosophical stance, just in River herself first and foremost, always there when he needed her most, and then in his friends and lastly in the human race’s potential to strive and overcome and display the greatest goodness amid the greatest adversity.

But River always had known more than he did about everything that mattered.

Recently, he’d watched as if through his own eyes set in a different head as the monk’s simulacrum of him professed, just as he would have, to be unsure he believed in anything—only to find that when belief was all he was, _River’s_ belief about what kind of man the Doctor is was all he needed to _be_ that man. He hadn’t needed to believe; it was enough that she did.

He’d realized as he watched that River had been right all along. He _did_ believe he couldn’t know if good really was good if the good thing wasn’t also the hard thing. Hadn’t he spent centuries in this face before he found her again trying to figure out if he was good by putting it to the test over and over? Isn’t that actually what he’d been doing all this time since he stole a TARDIS and ran off with her to see the universe?

 _Now it really is the final hour,_ he thinks. _And I will be him, River, at the end. Your Doctor._

“Without hope. Without witness. Without reward,” he says aloud and goes out to meet the enemy.

**(How we sing as we limp through the air)**

He isn’t alone on the battlefield after all. The Master, both of her, may have abandoned him, but _she’s_ always there. His River’s always there. And he always listens.

There are so many of them. So many cybermen. He has to hold out, though, has to give Nardole enough time. So many of them, but he’s _fast_ , if only because he feels River’s hand in his and hears her voice over the explosions, urging him to come on, to pick up the pace, to—

_Run!_

—and—

 _Run_ faster _, Doctor_.

—and—

_One last run, Doctor, you and me!_

Always there when you need her, River Song.

His back is on fire and it’s a moment before he realizes it’s because one of them has got him. He’s somehow turned around so he’s facing it by the time he realizes he’s been shot.

It’s one of the Mondasian ones—it seems almost friendly after seeing Bill behind that face. “Hello!” he says warmly. “I’m the Doctor.”

“Doctors are not required.”

But that’s nonsense. Everyone—the whole ridiculous, ungrateful, beautiful universe—never ever _stops_ needing him. No matter how tired he is. The Doctor is required, commanded, _obliged_. At the pleasure of the human race—that’s the Doctor. That’s him.

“It doesn’t know you, sweetie,” River explains. “Not _the_ Doctor. It’s new,” she says with mock pity.

_Oh!_

The cyberman shoots him again—“Arrgh!”—but he can’t be bothered with the fresh pain because River is right, this particular cyberman is _uninformed_ , and he has to set the record straight. “No, no. I'm not _a_ doctor. I am _the_ Doctor. The original, you might say.”

It’s shot him a _third_ time—really, that’s just excessive; it’s not like he isn’t already dying after all—but it’s all right because he can’t feel it this time. He can’t feel anything anymore, even when the ground rushes up to whack his knees, except River’s hand.

It’s warm on his and he looks down for the comfort of seeing her hand fitted around his hand, but he can’t see it for the damn glow.

“That’s all right,” she says.

“Doctor?” He must not have been listening for a moment because she says his name as if to get his attention, once, then again. “Doctor, it’s time. You’ve done it. You’ve given the others enough time. You can let go, Doctor. _Doctor_ . . .”

“Doctor,” he echoes, “Doctor, let it go.” Trying to make sense of it, he repeats what she’s saying even as her words reach his ears—or whatever. River doesn’t always speak to him aloud, but never mind. She’d said it was _enough_. “Time enough,” he says.

“Yes. Do it _now_ , Doctor,” River urges insistently, and he realizes she thinks he’s about to pass out. Okay, maybe he is. She’s hardly ever wrong.

He brings the screwdriver up and triggers the explosion that should take out every cyberman on the deck.

Including Bill, he remembers, as the flames roil up. _Poor Bill._

“Don’t worry. She’ll be fine,” River says.

He tries to nod to show he’s heard because even if she’s lying it was kind of her, but it’s too hot, too hard to breathe, so much of the air burned up now, and the respiratory bypass isn’t kicking in.

“It’s all right,” River says and puts her cool hands on his face. “I’m here.”

Looking up at her, he notices the burning sky above her head first for the way it seems to make her curls glow with a light of their own. Then he remembers what it really is.

He hopes it was indeed enough time, that nothing delayed Nardole and the others, but then River had said it was enough, so that’s fine.

He hopes the end will be quick for Bill. He wonders if Missy and the Master made it out.

He really thought Missy had changed.

“Oh, but she had,” River assures him. “You know it. The younger one, though, all that pain and hate, it just weighed too much. She got too close to it. It pulled her under.”

“Pity,” he manages. “No stars. I hoped there’d be stars.” It’s not quite enough words to say what he means, but River will know what he means like always, so it’s okay.

She doesn’t disappoint. “You can still have that, both of you. It’s not too late. A whole new cycle, Doctor. Twelve more lifetimes is plenty of time. Just regenerate. Regenerate and you can go and find her.”

He can still hear her, even if he can’t keep his eyes open to look at her. That’s good.

“And save her from herself?” he says wryly, if not quite out loud. Doesn’t matter. River always hears what he doesn’t say.

“It’s what we all need saving from, in the end.”

“Don’t I know it. But I’m tired, River.”

“I know.”

“So tired. I miss you so much.”

“Shh,” she soothes, and kisses his forehead. Her hands stroke his hair. “Rest, then. Sleep. For just a little while.”

He thinks he smiles when she adds that last bit. As if he’d ever think she was giving in and letting him win an argument. Certainly she wouldn’t this one.

-x-

He wakes on the TARDIS, River’s and Missy’s voices echoing in his head. For a few moments, he’s not sure which him is dying, which him he is.

But he’s all of them, of course, and all of him is supposed to die this time.

It’s the one with the chin he clings to longest.

“When the Doctor . . . when the Doctor was me . . .”

He married River in this face. He fell in love with her in this face, probably somewhere between her landing on him in the doorway of the TARDIS and following her into the Aplan catacombs. Maybe that first day in the Library, if Sandshoes were more honest. But either way, this is the face _she_ first knew and loved. It’s a good face in which to die.

“. . . . when the Doctor was _me_.”

But _he’s_ the Doctor and that’s not his face, not any more. Not his bow tie falling through his fingers.

The one in his pocket, _that’s_ still his. The one he and River wrapped around their hands.

But his face is the face that heard the towers sing and tried to tell River how magical, how miraculous they, the two of them, him and her together, always were.

 _They've been there for millions of years, through storms and floods and wars and_ time . . .

That’s the face that’s dying now, but his death will be the last.

He’s just got that sorted when his stupid body betrays him. His body means to live, and it knows how.

“It's starting. I'm regenerating. No! No! No! No! No! No!”

He won’t do it again, he won’t! He won’t have some other face with eyes that never looked into his wife’s and hands hers never clasped and feet that never ran with her.

He tamps the willful energy down viciously.

The TARDIS lands. He hadn’t realized she was flying until now. But of course, she and River were ever of a kind—his bad girls—and of like minds, and River wants him to go on.

“Where have you taken me?” he demands. He’s not even going to _have_ this argument. Not with either of them. “If you're trying to make a point, I'm not listening. I don't want to change again. Never again! I can't keep on being somebody else! Wherever it is, I'm staying!”

“God, you’re hard work at _every_ age, aren’t you?” River says.

Ignoring her (he’s not _having_ this argument; he’s not even _listening_ —see?), he runs outside just to get it over with.

**(Look below, there’s a field over there)**

Moments later, when his first face walks out of the snow and he realizes what the words he’s overheard mean—his first face, too, refusing to change—he realizes the TARDIS has brought him here for another reason besides just winning the argument he’s _not_ having.

He’s not sorry for complaining, though. She’s _also_ making a point, and he hasn’t missed it.

“You. How can it be you?”

He doesn’t remember this, doesn’t remember not wanting to change that first time, and he _had_ changed then, obviously, so clearly it’s up to him—him now—to make sure that will happen _before_ anything he remembers happening happens, before he and the _other_ he go their separate ways, in other words, at which point the timelines will no longer be out of sync and the first him will be able to retain memories again.

If he can’t make sure of that, God knows what will become of the universe, all the mucking around with it he’s done in the last twelve faces, but never mind that—he’s done with saving the universe.

There’ll be a worse consequence, though, if his former self doesn’t regenerate. He’ll die without ever being the face who meets River. She might have a far more peaceful and pleasant life in that case (if considerably shorter even than her own cut-short life had been, since she’d be totally human in that version of events), but River wouldn’t want that, he knows. She chose their life together at the cost of her own in the Library. _Not one line_ , she’d said, and he hadn’t, no matter how it hurt or who _._ He let them have the Pond’s child and waited for the woman and she’d come and she’d killed him and she’d chosen him again. Again and again.

“Peaceful and pleasant,” River scoffs. “I’d be _bored_.”

He’ll have to fix this, then.

“You’d _better_ fix it,” she says.

But that’s all right. His body still hasn’t given up on him, and it’ll take some time yet to wear it out, thwart the regeneration for good. Keeping busy will speed things up a bit more than sitting around the TARDIS would, so it’s win-win, really. He’s never liked waiting.

Also, it _is_ interesting to get a close up, outside glimpse of his first face after all this time. Did he really curl his hair like that? So _fussy_.

He can _hear_ River smirking. She thinks—loudly—of the gelled fastidiousness of Sandshoes’ hair, often with one or two locks fixed fast ever so precisely out of place.

 _Shut up._ Aloud, he responds to himself, “Well, it’s all those years of bigger on the inside. You try sucking your tummy in that long. Why are you trying not to regenerate?”

“Even if you don’t remember, don’t you _know_?” River says, like he’s being unbelievably stupid. “Why are _you_?”

 _You know why._ I’m _tired._

“Rule one, you liar.”

“I have the courage and the right to live and die as myself,” the first him says with proud dignity.

“Liar!” River exclaims, sounding amazed at the audacity of the lie. But what lie could be brazen enough to impress _her_? “Courage is exactly what it’s _not_ ,” she explains in response to his unarticulated thought.

“Too late—it’s started,” he tells himself. “A few minutes ago, you were weak as a kitten, right? Now you're fine. We're in a state of grace, both of us, but it won't last long. We have a choice. Either we change and go on, or we die as we are. But if you—if you die here, if your future never happens, if you don't do the things that you are supposed to do, the consequences could be . . .”

He trails off. Time’s gone all funny. _Sticky_. It feels a little like—

Time congeals further. The change is visible now.

“The snow,” he murmurs.

“The snow?”

“Look at it!”

“How extraordinary,” marvels the younger him.

He lifts a hand to the nearest snowflake.

Well.

One last adventure then. To ensure all the rest he’d had after that first face. So he can die here at the end of them in a face that ran with River Song for all those centuries on that beautiful, long happily-ever-after of a night. And yeah, okay, he’ll save the universe in the bargain, if that’s what it takes. One more time, why not.

So, let’s see.

“Everything's stopped. But why? Maybe it's us, maybe it's something else, but somehow, something has gone very wrong with time.”

“ _Really_?” River says. “You think so?”

But someone is coming, calling through the veil of arrested snow.

“Sorry, so sorry. I don’t suppose either of you is a doctor?”

“Are you trying to be funny?” he says over River’s laughter.

The soldier doesn’t have time to answer before a light blazes up behind him and makes him panic.

“She’s coming, she’s coming. It’s her!”

“Not human, I think,” the other him says, approaching the latest arrival.

“Must be Christmas,” River says happily.

Might as well be.

“State your planet of origin and your intentions,” the other Doctor says formally. “This is Earth, a level five civilization.”

But no, that’s not quite it. Something’s missing.

“And it is protected,” he adds.

“It’s what?” says his first face, as River pointedly murmurs, “Is it?”

The light goes out, taking the creature in its center with it.

“Oh, okay.” That was easy. “That doesn’t usually work.”

River snorts. Yes, all right, it probably hasn’t worked this time either.

“Protected by whom?”

“Oh, it is early days, isn’t it?”

“For both of you,” River says confidentially, leaning close to his ear like she’s telling him a secret, as the other him turns his attention to the soldier, ignoring his comment like he’s ignoring the obvious about who said it.

“You’re a stubborn old man even then,” River says behind him as he follows the others to the TARDIS. “Twelve more faces and it’s only gotten _worse_. Really, sweetie, you might want to focus on turning it down a little in the next one.”

Well, maybe, a bit perhaps . . . but no, there isn’t going to _be_ a next one. She’s not getting around him that easily. Not this time. This is one argument he means to win.

**(With our full crew aboard / Comin’ in on a wing and a prayer)**

His mind newly full of years of missing memories, billions of years of them (though only the first few of ’em aren’t rubbish torture-by-confession-dial), his Clara back in his head, he believes Bill at last.

They _are_ the real thing, these giant glass databases full of the memories of the dead. They’re the people they remember being in every way that really matters.

And that raises a very tantalizing question, although he doesn’t think of it immediately or on his own.

For once, the universe has given something back, and that is a good note on which to go.

He sends the TARDIS into the vortex. She turns on a monitor.

“Oh, there it is. Silly old universe. The more I save it, the more it needs saving. It's a treadmill.”

He’s getting off.

The TARDIS tells him why she thinks he shouldn’t. Had there really once been a time he’d longed for her to be able to speak to him? Now she won’t shut up. But no, he doesn’t mean that. He’s glad to hear her, even now. Especially now. Here at the end, he still has his box.

“Yes, _yes_ , I _know_ they'll get it all wrong without me,” he answers. He’s too tired to care, even about how much better he could do it, can’t she feel that? Besides, without him, maybe they’ll learn to make their own fairy tales. 

She’s not played all her cards yet, though, his box. She has something else to say, to make him remember, to make him _think_.

_Imp of the Pandorica, thief. Last Tree of Garsennon._

Oh. _Oh._

The Testimony’s leader, their founder, she _knew_ him and by more names than most. She knew the _stories_ , then. Lots of them. But he’s sure that anyone who knows those would know the most outlandish, magical, entertaining, and heartbreaking of them all. In other words, she’d know all the ones with River in. She’d know who River was—what she was to him.

But when she’d wanted to bargain with him, it was _Bill_ she’d offered him.

He’d been thrilled by the sight of her. And he’s so glad to have seen her again.

But if Helen Clay had access to all the stories the dead remembered, she’d have offered him River Song if she could have.

The Testimony Foundation collected and preserved _every_ one. Helen thought of it as Heaven. That meant she hadn’t just wanted to preserve significant first-hand accounts of history for the sake of thorough record-keeping. She’d wanted to _save_ the human race. Every last one of them.

Time lord or not, River had been human (beautifully, heartbreakingly human), and the Testimony didn’t have her.

River _is_ human. She **_is_**. Somewhere, somewhen. If her saved consciousness really was nothing but an echo, the Testimony would have collected her memories in the Library. Somehow the Library hadn’t been the death of her after all. She hadn’t really ended when she’d faded before his eyes on Trenzalore. 

Hope. That’s what the old girl has gone and given him. Beautiful, irresistible, terrible hope.

But it’s hope that River isn’t beyond his reach forever, except in his head. Hope that River was right and there’s still time. But time with _her._

That’s a hope worth risking another lifetime, another face. The possibility of finding her again is worth braving a face she’s never known or loved, worth braving another lifetime alone on the battlefield if hope is not rewarded.

“I suppose one more lifetime wouldn't kill anyone,” he says, trying to sound grudging even though he knows he can’t fool his TARDIS. “Well, except me.”

But that’s all right. He can be someone else if there’s even a chance that person might be with River again.

But first . . .

“You wait a moment, Doctor. Let's get it right. I've got a few things to say to you.” The new Doctor might be forgetful at first, too, and some things shouldn’t be forgotten, even for a moment. So. “Basic stuff first. Never be cruel, never be cowardly, and never, ever eat pears! Remember, hate is always foolish. And love is always wise. Always try to be nice, but _never fail_ to be kind. Oh!”

He smiles, and it hurts. Both the grief and the hope—hurting. “And you mustn't tell anyone your name.”

Not that it matters because he wouldn’t _want_ to tell anyone who isn’t River even if he could, but the next Doctor might as well face facts now: If River _is_ gone after all, the next face will be nameless just like he has been for so long, fully known to no one, once again the Doctor and nothing more. That’s the risk he’s taking here. A whole new lifetime without her. Without River speaking his name. It’s hers, only _hers_.

“No one would understand it _anyway_.” No one else. “Except—ah!” He cries out as his body rebels and he falls. This is it, then, the last moment—now it’s stay and die or change and live. Fine, but he’s _talking_. “Except children,” he finishes. “Children can hear it sometimes. If their hearts are in the right place, and the stars are too, children can hear your name.”

The pain swamps him briefly and he cries out again but grabs the console and struggles to pull himself to his feet anyway. He’s going to _live_ , just once more, just in case, so he’d better act like it. “But nobody else,” he grates through gritted teeth, hardly aware of what he’s saying as he manages to stand. “Nobody else, ever.” For River, he’ll do it. He’ll change, be someone else. In the hopes of seeing her again.

Last Tree of Garsennon. How does he get _that_ one? Ought to be interesting to find out.

Now what was he saying? Was that everything? Did he leave anything out? Let’s see . . . “Laugh hard, run fast, be kind.”

“That’s it, Doctor,” River says. “That’s everything that truly matters.”

Wasn’t there something about pears? Had he mentioned the pears? But River was right. That’d do. Laugh, run fast, be kind—that was all the important stuff, when you boiled it down, so it’d be quite enough for the _next_ Doctor who wasn’t him to be getting on with.

“ _My_ Doctor,” River reminds gently, soothingly. “Always. The face changes, but never that. You will still be the one I love.”

Well then. In that case, it needn’t be _this_ him. He can just . . .

“Let go, my love. And _live_.”

Yeah. “Doctor . . . I let you go.”

Performative words, shaping reality. Unleashed, the energy burns through him, rewriting every cell, erasing him and creating her anew.

She feels but barely notices the ring sliding off her new finger. There is so much to notice all at once and all of it brand new. Like the hands with the new fingers that the ring is too big for now, but they are the hands that held River’s all the same. ’Course they are. Silly Doctor.

She uses them to grasp the monitor and turn it to face her. In it, her new reflection is faint but enough to explain why all this new feels so much _more_ new than it ever has before.

She smiles at the realization. “Oh, brilliant!”

“Quite,” River says, continuing unfazed as the TARDIS suddenly tilts precipitously and doesn’t adapt her internal gravity to compensate, “but you’d better find something to hang on to.”

Too late, dear. The Doctor falls and then scrabbles at the floor and finally manages to grab the opposite side of the console as she tumbles past it. She could swear the TARDIS is actually trying to shake her out of the doors that have flown open. She turns a wounded look up to the time rotor, in time to see flames fill it. Her head fills with the old girl’s desperation, tinged with apology. Then the TARDIS blows the panel she’s holding onto off the console. Unanchored, she falls, through the door and into cold, thin night air.

She sees with alarm a huge fireball engulfing the console room through the open doors as she drops away from them, and then the TARDIS dematerializes.

**(ending one: “When you call my name, it’s like a little prayer.”)**

Bewildered, brand new, and now alone in the empty sky, the Doctor falls. The air is too thin up here to be much use but she fills her lungs with it anyway and shouts accusingly, “ _RIVER_! You _said_ hang on!”

She’d _held on_ and look how much good it did.

“I _didn’t_ say hang on to _the_ _TARDIS_.”

There isn’t enough air left in her lungs for talking so she contents herself with shouting mentally. _Is this the right time for jokes, do you think??_

“That wasn’t a joke, honey. That was _flirting_. Can’t you tell the difference in this face?”

_Maybe if I weren’t fallin’ to my death!_

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. State of grace.” River says this last with a hint of mockery. “Stupid name, but it’s not a clever lie this time.”

 _So, what . . . I’ll bounce?_ She’s thinking more calmly now, curiosity about what will happen when she hits the ground kicking in.

“Oh, probably quite a big crater I should think,” River says with amusement. “Cheer up! You always did like to make an _impression_.”

_That was terrible, River. Just dreadful._

“Oh, come on, it was _funny_. Well, you’ll laugh later.”

_I don’t think this face likes puns._

“You’re just grumpy. Oh, stop sulking already! You know she had a good reason for tossing you out. She’s always looking out for you.”

 _I think I’m entitled to sulk the_ entire _time I’m plummetin’ to Earth from seven miles up, thank you!_

“Fine. That’s about two and a half minutes to go, then. Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

_‘About’? Not very precise. Is that the best you can do? Falling from stupid heights is one of your specialties._

“ _I_ never _fell_.”

_River!_

“All right. Try not to squash anyone.”

 _Oh, thanks, dear. Any_ more _helpful advice?_

“Yes, don’t break that pretty new face.”

_RIVER!_

The eye-rolling is audible.

“Respiratory bypass, you idiot. Why are you unconscious? _Wake up, Doctor!_ ”

Brand new cells flood with oxygen again, and the Doctor’s eyes fly open. Respiratory bypass—wow, that’s one system you _really_ don’t want regeneration to knock offline if you’re going to be free-falling from 40(ish)000 feet.

The ground is a _whole_ lot closer now.

She’s smiling, though, because River Song is right where she’s always been. As infuriating and amazing as ever. And still hers.

“Okay,” she mutters, “not squashin’ anyone. Right. Here goes . . .”

**(ending two: “One more thing . . .” “Isn’t there always?”)**

Bewildered, brand new, and now alone in the empty sky, the Doctor falls. The air is too thin up here to be much use but she fills her lungs with it anyway and shouts accusingly, “ _RIVER_! You _said_ hang on!”

When she feels arms beneath her knees, around her back, a warm body pressing against her side, she starts to mentally roll her eyes at herself. Comfort from her imaginary wife is all very nice—the only thing that’s gotten her through more than one dark day—but as lovely as the sensation of being in River’s arms feels, it’s hardly going to keep her from hitting the ground.

But then she marks the recent flash of light, the crackle of energy, the smell of the vortex that still lingers—all of which her addled mind had skipped over initially.

“I _didn’t_ say to hang on to _the TARDIS_ , though,” River says, and the Doctor looks up to see the gleefully smiling face of her wife through the curls the wind is lashing across it and gasps in belated shock. “Hang on to _me_.”

For a few more seconds, as River shifts the Doctor so she can press her body securely against her chest and shoulder with one arm and free the other hand, they are falling together. In the next second, River’s fingers must activate the vortex manipulator on her wrist because they are yanked out of time and space the cheap and nasty way.

She’s never been more grateful for River’s skill than she is when their feet materialize firmly but gently on solid ground, the vortex crackling around them. Well, _River’s_ feet are on solid ground. Hers are bumping against River’s shins until River stands her on them.

River is laughing and she feels it against her chest because she’s still clinging to River as tightly as she can. But she’s laughing too, she realizes. That sweet pealing sound is _her_ laugh. She’s a woman now, a woman who laughs, and this is how it sounds when she does.

“How was _that_ for a heroic rescue?” River says, still laughing.

She hasn’t done anything about the clinging yet, except move her arms around the Doctor’s back so she’s hugging her instead of pinning her in place as if the Doctor’s life depends on it, so the Doctor doesn’t feel moved to let go just yet.

“That was pretty good, you’ve got to admit. That was really, _really_ good.”

“God, it was amazin’. How the hell did you—” She cuts herself off and, though her death grip on River had begun to loosen, now she tightens her arms again but this time in an embrace. “No, never mind. Explain later. Everything can wait until later.” She presses her face into River’s neck, into her hair, and breathes her in like it’s the scent of her rather than sufficient oxygen that her lungs are starved for. “How you’re here, if you’re really real, if this is all just in my head and I’m unconscious from oxygen deprivation and about to go splat,” she reels off as she finally pulls back enough to see River’s face. “It can all wait.”

River laughs again as her hands find the Doctor’s arms and squeeze them affectionately.

Then the Doctor is lifting trembling hands to River’s face and pushing the wildly tangled curls away from it until her palms can press against skin. “You’re the first,” she says, wonderingly. She can still read the microexpressions around River’s eyes, she learns with pleasure, and adds, in answer to their question, “The first face this face sees.”

River brings her own hands up and curls them warmly around the Doctor’s neck so she can return the intense gaze that is lovingly roaming her face. “Oh, Doctor,” she says, her voice even warmer than the touch of her hands. “My Doctor. You are and always will be the first face _this_ face saw.”

The Doctor shifts her thumbs over River’s cheeks and then reaches her fingers up. She brushes them over River’s eyes when they obligingly close and then strokes her fingers along her brows, across her forehead, over her temples, down to her jaw, up to cup her cheeks again. One thumb is edging toward River’s mouth to slide over her lips as River opens her eyes again. It stills halfway there when River speaks, so as not to interfere.

“Will it make a difference, do you think?” River quirks her brows above laughing eyes. “Think you’ll love me more now because this face was the first?”

The Doctor lightly brushes her thumb back and forth across River’s mouth a few times before she answers. “I’m not sure it’s possible,” she murmurs. “To love you more now than I did.” She looks up from River’s mouth to catch her eyes with her own. “So, no, it doesn’t make a difference, but I’m glad anyway. That your face is the first. This precious face I love most in all the universe.”

She wants to kiss it, that face, kiss that mouth, kiss River. The warmth and love shining out of River’s face tell her it will be welcome. She leans in, pauses with her lips a breath from River’s. “First kiss,” she whispers.

“I’ll make it a good one,” River promises.


End file.
